Dear Caroline and Feier-Melody,
You both asked me what my religion, the Baha'i Faith is. Caroline, in response
to what you wrote about that elderly gentleman, I would think he was talking about Baha'i. I don't know what else could fit his description. :-)
Feier, I will tell you, but first I want to reassure you that you didn't upset me in any way. Thereis no problem between us at all. It's just that your questions about Christianity reminded me that from time to time here, people want me to teach them about Christianity, as though I'm a Christian. However, I'm not a
Christian. I believe that all the world relgions are each part of the same unfolding religion of God, and that I follow the most recent teacher, known as Baha'u'llah.
I accept that you are an atheist, Feier-Melody. That is what you believe, and
I respect it. I also understand that you only want to learn something aboutChristianity for your information, and not in order to become a Christian.
Christianity is growing rapidly in the PRC, and I don't want to be thought to be
part of something that I'm not. In the past I wrote a series on world religions with one post for each of the major world religions. I try to give a very
balanced overview, but that would change if I were to begin to write a great deal from the New Testament and about Christianity. I can tell you, as a Baha'i, what I believe about it all if you want. I can share some stories ofthat Jesus himself told.
It happens that I know a lot about Christianity and also about other great world
religions *because* I'm a Baha'i, so I use it in my discussions. I need to understand other people's religions in order to be able to respect them and to be in
unity with them. However, I certainly can't set out to teach Christianity, except from a Baha'i perspective. If anyone wants that, I'm
willing, but to teach anyone Christianity so that they would become a Christian
would be very odd, when I myself believe that three further teachers have come since Jesus Christ, and that each was as true a world teacher as Jesus himself.
I
know that Christians teach that Jesus is the *only one* anyone should turn to,
and use words from the New Testament to try to prove it. That claim has always
been made by the priests of the former religion in order to try to disprove the
truth of the new teacher. In my faith we have no priests. Humans haveenough ability now to be their own priests and we hope that in the futurewhen the next great teacher comes, after about a thousands years, this time that
one may not be persecuted and possibly killed as almost all the others have been.
My understanding is that Jesus is the one to follow during *his* time which can
be as long as a thousand years or more until the next teacher appeared, in accordance with Jesus' own prophecies. Of course most Christians won't agree,
since they have been taught quite differently. I don't want to find myselfembroiled in an argument with any who may be here on the forum.
Each teacher should be the one followed during the time of his "dispensation."
In other words, during his own "day of God." Then it is time to follow the new
teacher, without throwing away the basic and always repeated truths that each onenever changes. Anyway, I hope this explains my seeming reluctance, Feier-Melody?
I was born and raised in a sincere Christian family. My parents were able to
think for themselves, so they didn't raise me to blindly follow the religion into which I was born. So when I began to be old enough to want to look for something that could end war, and do away with extremes of poverty and wealth I investigated everything I could find that might do it, anything that crossed my path,
or that I could read about in books or find out from other people or hear in church. I had a rule for myself that they had to be doing these things in the present, and also that they had to teach what I found reasonable, and not superstitious. I didn't find any of them that seemed to me to fit until one day I met a Baha'i. By then I thought it likely wouldn't have the answers, either. But everything I asked about or read made sense to me, and I liked the answers to my many questions.
Ben knew Baha'is too, and a few months after we were married we decided to
become Baha'is ourselves, and to try to become part of future humanity, and help
to build the healing pattern that the Baha'i Faith offers. Eventually my mother became a Baha'i, and my brother. My father and Ben's parents were all very friendly to the Faith. There are Baha'is all over the world now, and they are of
every kind of person imaginable. It is the fastest growing religion in the world, and only Christianity is established in more places because it is established
in Vatican City in Italy.
I've tried to explain about the Baha'i Faith here before when it came up, but sometimes it isn't easy for people to catch the picture, so I would like to use the metaphor of a student in a school. The world is a world-school which each of
us enter when we are born for our individual development. In my mataphor, though, the young child is humanity. The teachers of each grade are the founders of
the great world religions.
A young child starts school. She has a teacher in kindergarten who spends the
year with her and other students, teaching them so that they will be prepared to
be able to listen and learn and to have enough command of themselves to obey theteacher. When they reach that level they can enter grade one. Their new gradeone teacher teaches them letters and numbers, and how to begin to read and
write and so on. At the end of grade one they are prepared for grade two, and the grade two teacher continues their education. This happens all through school
as each teacher raises the level, building on what has already been taught. Without the learning taught by previous teachers they would not be able to keep going on and on. There must be an orderly progression.
It is the same for humanity. Teachers have always come to take humanity to a
higher level of unity. Without all of the earlier teachers who each built on the base that had been previously established by earlies teachers it would have been impossible for the latest teacher to teach their students more, because the students wouldn't be capable of assimilating the advancing teaching.
Teachers have always come, one after the other. The earliest is known to us asAdam. His teachings were in story form in which he taught that humans had a
soul and that there were laws from God. Other teachers followed, including among them, Abraham, Moses, Krishna, the Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus and Muhammad.
It is my deeply considered belief that the Bab, and Baha'u'llah were the most
recent. "The Bab" is a title that means Gate. He was the gate whose teachings
prepared some people for the almost immediate appearance of Baha'u'llah.
Each great teacher promised that there would be another teacher after him. Eachteacher also spoke of a great time to come when the world would become a
peaceful and happy place. Some said it would be like a reflection of heaven on
earth.
They couldn't tell the people of their times how to make a peaceful world and a
united human family because people didn't know enough and hadn't made enough
progress to even begin to understand how to proceed. To proceed was impossible
for them anyway. Now that we have world inter-communications, we know all countries, we have fast travel, the internet, and also, we have the dangers of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. We are damaging the air, the waters and the earth through our spiritual immaturity shown for example, in lack of harmony together and
in greed and lust for power. We have hatred between religions and other hatreds
. It is a time of a lot of darkness, but the way to proceed from here to peace
and oneness has come, as promised.
I believe that now is the promised time when lasting peace can be established
and cooperation between nations can happen. The human genome project has even shown that literally we are truly all one human family. Now we need to become that way in our hearts, and to learn how to peacefully share our only home this lovely planet, with each other.
Baha'is are people who have independently investigated and come to believe that
this is the truth. So we are following the teachings by practising how to live
together without racial, religious, class, educational or other prejudices. We
are trying to learn how to use consultation in all our own activities and the
rest of the guidance Baha'u'llah gave us, to prove that it works. Then we can offer it to the rest of the world, if they want it.
Baha'is have nothing at all to do with partisan politics, and we are obedient tothe governments of our countries. We are patriotic, but we are not nationalistic. We believe we have already proved in our communities and in our world community that it is possible to live in harmony and without prejudice with peoples who differ from ourselves in ways such as appearance, race, religion, culture, nationality, class, educational level, wealth, poverty, and so on.
We observe the present world order crumbling, and see a new pattern of life able
to function in this now international world, is being laid out in its place. Anybody who wants to can join us to help build the new pattern. All it takes is for them to take a close look for themselves and decide if they agree that
Baha'u'llah is the new Teacher and that they want to begin to help and that theyfind his teachings healing and good for all. If so, then they are Baha'is.
In a school there is progress for students from grade to grade. As students
progress they need each grade so they are ready to go on to the next. This happens over and over until a child who entered kindergarten knowing almost nothing
may end up a well educated and highly capable person. Without each teacher preparing them for each next level it wouldn't have been possible.
Think of humanity as the student, and the founders of the great world religions
as the teachers. Each builds on the original foundation, but each also teaches
what is needed to heal their times and carry them into the future. Each is a
world educator. Each came and brought a more advanced message, according to the
level the student had attained and will need. When that has been learned and due to new conditions the world seems again to be teetering on the brink of falling backward, the next teacher appears.
Baha'is believe that is how humans advanced from the level of the individual to
that of the family, then to tribes, to city states, to nations. And now it is the time when we have advanced far enough to move to one world living in global harmony. That is the highest form of organization on this planet.
This time we need to learn to abandon all prejudices that divide us and find ouroneness. We need to have equality between men and women in opportunities,
rights and privileges, a universal currency based of a gold and silver standard,
a world system of weights and measures, world inter-language taught in all the
schools of the world so that we can communicate easily. We need universal education for all. An end to the extremes of wealth and poverty, independent investigation of truth, unity between science and religion, to understand that all the
religions are one, establishment of universal peace, world law, world level government (such as a well advanced U.N.) with executive, legislative and judicial functions and an international police force.
As you can see, the world has made progress in many of these principles since
1844 when the Bab first declared another teacher was about to appear. And since
1863 when Baha'u'llah began teaching. And since 1892 when Baha'u'llah died, still a prisoner. And since 1912 when his son, recently freed by the Young Turk revolution after 40 years imprisonment, travelled through Europe and North America
to share this Faith and its teachings. And since that son died in 1921.
This all came about because it is time for it. Baha'is didn't do it, we onlysupport these things, but people and governments themselves put them into place.
There are two kinds of peace coming, Baha'u'llah explained. The first he called
The Lesser Peace. That is the peace that the governments of the world will soonestablish themselves It's seen in the establishing of many of the principles, and it is the peace of disarmament. The nations will soon probably hold a large international top-level meeting to establish the borders of each country. They will all agree on the borders. Then, if any country attacks another, all the rest will arise together as they solemnly agreed, and stop it.
The second peace is called The Most Great Peace. That is the peace in the
hearts. It is spirituality. That will take much longer, but it will come. That is the peace that the Baha'is must do their best to help to bring about through their own loving and spiritual behaviour which will catch and spread and help
the world and its peoples become truly healthy again and the world will eventually be like a heaven on earth, a beautiful garden world filled with happy, contented and spiritually minded and educated people who are able to use their talents
and faculties for themselves and the whole.
That's as simple to understand as I can make it. If you have any comments or questions please don't be shy or afraid to ask me. I would never try to make anybody become a Baha'i. Proselytizing is forbidden to Baha'is. And each person is
supposed to investigate independently for themselves, and reach theirown conclusions about things, including their own beliefs about religion, of course. :-)
With warmth and affection to you, Caroline and Feier-Melody, and my verybest wishes to you all,
Mary
